4: Michael Lewis On How Trump’s Handling of Covid-19 Has Proven His Book, The Fifth Risk, Tragically Prophetic.

The Al Franken Podcast

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4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

In The Fifth Risk, Lewis portrayed Donald Trump as a man totally ignorant of and disinterested in the actually functioning of the federal government. The book’s title refers to the potential catastrophe that an administration fails to plan for and prevent.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, here at the Al Franken podcast, we've decided to open it back up, taking a cue from the president and having a staff party.
0:13.6	Hey, Alexis. She's a sound engineer. Hey, Jamal. He's our booker. Nice move, Ethan. All right. Yeah, we're back at full force here at the Al Franken podcast. Woo!
0:33.4	Okay, that was a fun party. Good to have the whole gang here in the studio.
0:39.3	A little crowded.
0:40.2	Actually, I did not know half the people who were there and got a little wild.
0:46.0	Peter, my exact producer, had too much to drink and threw up on Moira, who actually wrote this monologue, and I had to fire him.
1:00.0	Anyway, we've got a great one today, you know, for a change, and this time I mean it.
1:07.5	It's a return visit from Michael Lewis because he's just so great, unlike many of my
1:15.3	guests. You know, let's face it. Michael, of course, is a great journalist and author of many
1:22.9	New York Times bestsellers, Liars Poker, Moneyball, the big short. And last time we talked, we did about his latest, the fifth risk, which turns out was prophetic.
1:37.0	The book looked at the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations and is a scathing
1:43.7	indictment of Trump and his complete lack of
1:48.5	interest in how the federal government works. It's about how he populated his government with
1:54.1	just incompetent, craven and just plain venal people who had no idea how the federal government worked. The title, The Fifth Risk,
2:03.2	is about the catastrophe the government should be focusing on and isn't. And in our first interview
2:10.9	about nine months ago, Michael noted that Trump had gotten rid of the pandemic response office within the National Security Council, an office that the Obama administration established.
2:23.5	And since I had been in the Senate during Ebola, I commented on just how bad an idea that was.
2:30.9	Point is that it turns out that the Trump administration has given Michael a lot of material for his paperback.
2:42.0	And I think you'll find our conversation fun and edifying, you know, for a change.
2:48.6	A couple of things to talk about, first, though, the $1,200 check that 70 million Americans are
2:59.5	supposed to get this week, as you probably know, it's been delayed a few days by the
3:04.7	president's insistence that his name appear on the memo line of the check.
	...

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